The guru behind the hit Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda franchises has been in the hot seat every time Nintendo’s consoles appeared to lose momentum. Miyamoto’s dilemma: how to roll out new games quickly without sacrificing creativity.

One reason behind his amazing hits could be the freedom he enjoyed to be eccentric and to explore disruptive ideas that may take time to reach a breakthrough. In the gaming industry, creators pride themselves on their independence from business considerations, and spend considerable time fine-tuning every detail of the game.

“The theory is that if you put out 10 games, then you’re more likely, in aggregate, to do well, but in reality, it’s more likely that you’re going to have 10 mediocre games,” Owen Mahoney, chief financial officer of Nexon, the Tokyo-based pioneer of free-to-play games, told Japan Real Time.

“In any creative business, you’re likely to lose your focus if you have to make too many games in a year. Creativity goes down,” Mahoney added.

The sluggish sales of Wii U have repeatedly been blamed on the slow rollout of new games since the console hit the market in 2012.

Both Nintendo President Satoru Iwata and Miyamoto — considered by some as the videogame industry’s Steven Spielberg — said their problem wasn’t a dearth of new games, but the absence of a decisive blockbuster to drive console sales.

“I take it very seriously that the (new) games haven’t led to broader public interest,” Miyamoto said Thursday, emphasizing that he didn’t think the new games lacked the fun factor.

“We weren’t able to communicate their real attractiveness, and how we’re going to do that is going be our theme,” he said.